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By Root 370 0

and control group comparisons, tested definitively through statistical tools. In other sciences the counterfactuals must be inferred, as in the search for extra-solar-system planets, where none have ever been directly observed. The use of inference in the physical and biological sciences is commonplace, so we should not disparage its application in the historical sciences, including human history. An astronomer or biologist setting up a conditional string of components labeled “if p then q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z” uses the counterfactual conditional “if p′ then q′, r′, s′, t′, u, v′, w′, x′, y′, z′” no differently than does the historian. Newton’s famous formula F = MA (force equals mass times acceleration) is, in its essence, the conditional statement, “If a certain force is applied then an object will move as a function of its mass and acceleration,” or, counter-factually, “An object’s acceleration is dependent on its mass and the force applied to it.”

Unfortunately history has not found its Newton and no such simple formulas exist for historians (or any of the social sciences, for that matter). Still, a good start may be found comparing conditionals and counterfactual conditionals in historical time lines. That is, we can conduct thought experiments in the “if p then q” mode, informed by real historical examples of similar events to see how they unfolded in the “if p′ then q′” condition. This is what is known as the comparative method in historical science. What I am proposing is that when we compare, say, one culture or one time period to another to see how and why they differ, we are also rerunning the time line in a counterfactual experiment. We cannot literally rerun the time line, of course, but we can approximate it. To show how, I present two counterfactual “What ifs?” of history: What if Homo sapiens had gone extinct and Neanderthals survived? and What if there had been no agricultural revolution?

What If Neanderthals Won and We Lost?

I first started thinking about these questions when I wrote a review of Robert Wright’s book Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny12 for the Los Angeles Times.13 It did not dawn on me at the time, but Nonzero is a study in counterfactual historical reasoning. Wright’s thesis is that over billions of years of natural history, and over thousands of years of human history, there has been an increasing tendency toward the playing of nonzero games between organisms. This tendency has allowed more nonzero gamers to survive. (In zero-sum games the margin of victory for one is the margin of defeat for the other. If the Yankees beat the Mets 8-2, the Mets lose 2-8—where the margin of victory is +6 and the margin of defeat –6, summing to zero. In non-zero-sum games both players gain, as in an economic exchange where I win by purchasing your product and you win by receiving my money.)

Although competition between individuals and groups was common in both biological evolution and cultural history, Wright argues that symbiosis among organisms and cooperation among people have gradually displaced competition as the dominant form of interaction. Why? Because those who cooperated by playing nonzero games were more likely to survive and pass on their genes for cooperative behavior. And this process has been ongoing, “from the primordial soup to the World Wide Web,” including and especially hominids. From the Paleolithic to today, human groups have evolved from bands of hundreds, to tribes of thousands, to chiefdoms of tens of thousands, to states of hundreds of thousands, to nations of millions (and one with a billion). This could not have happened through zerosum exchanges alone. The hallmarks of humanity—language, tools, hunting, gathering, farming, writing, art, music, science, and technology—could not have come about through the actions of isolated zero-sum gamers.

Wright’s counterfactual reasoning comes in at the book’s leitmotif: non-zero-sumness has produced direction in evolution, and this directionality means that “the evolutionary process is subordinate to a larger purpose